RENO, Nevada — Blood ran down the face of Peyton Ferris even after Montana State’s trainer applied a bandage to the cut above her right eye. Ferris had to change from her No. 2 to No. 40 because her normal jersey was stained by the trickle.
After driving to the hoop and receiving a hard foul from behind, Riley Nordgaard stood up shaking her wrists in pain after bracing herself for the third hard fall she would take in the first quarter alone. By the fourth quarter, she had to go to the bench, tears running down her face after taking a blow to the temple.
On a loose ball in the final frame, Lindsay Stockton was blasted from behind. She sat on the court, disoriented for a moment, rubbing her neck and wondering if she had suffered her second concussion of the season.
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For the duration of the second half, Idaho State battered, bludgeoned and blasted the Bobcats without relent. The grinding style aided a comeback for the ages and set up a final possession no one at the Reno Special Events Center will soon forget.
Clinging to a 50-49 lead with six seconds remaining, Nordgaard missed a pair of free throws. Idaho State inbounded the ball to Juliet Jones, who had not taken a shot all game. The ISU sophomore calmly dribbled within 27 feet of the basket and let fly the shot of her life. The 3-pointer found nothing but the bottom of the net, shattering the collective hearts of the Bobcats.
The buzzer-beater lifted the ninth-seeded Bengals to a 52-50 upset victory over Montana State, the tournament’s top seed, in the quarterfinals of the BSC postseason. After the shot went in, the officials reviewed and deemed MSU would have 0.2 seconds for one last try. Hannah Caudill’s last-gasp effort went awry and the biggest upset of the new neutral site tournament was complete.
After Jones’ shot found the bottom of the, the Bobcat bench melted into a pool of emotion. Caudill fell to her knees on the court, pulling her jersey over her face. Typically stoic senior Jasmine Hommes instantly burst into tears. Stockton wore a blank look on her face, the shock of the moment permeating the air. Ferris crumbled into a heap on the bench, the shockwave of a season-ending loss impossible to believe.
“It feels like a knife goes through your heart,” said Hommes, the Big Sky Most Valuable Player during the final season of her sure-fire MSU Hall of Fame career. “It hurts. We will live to see another day with the WNIT. But to lose like this in the Big Sky Conference, it’s hard to explain.”
The only emotion in the arena that could match MSU’s agony was the ecstasy of the Bengals. An instant after the final shot swished home, towering Idaho State head coach Seton Sobolewski collapsed to the ground, his feet flailing above his body as he lay on his back like a capsized beetle. The ISU bench erupted, several Bengals falling to the ground and others leaping as the pure joy of the moment consumed them.
“We just put ourselves in a position to hit a good shot,” ISU head coach Seton Sobolewski said. “As (ISU men’s) Coach (Bill)Evans just told me, it was just like I drew it up (laughs). A lot of people say that’s a lucky shot. Well, you get lucky and you get opportunities like that when you have the right attitude, you hang in there, you stay optimistic and good things can happen. Juliet hit an amazing shot. That’s why she’s in the game.”
Jones’ shot capped a furious Idaho State comeback that included a 12-1 run over the final 92 seconds of the game. Montana State took a 49-40 lead on a pair of Hommes free throws with 2:01 to play and a 50-42 lead with 1:23 remaining. Isabel Vara de Rey hit her second 3-pointer during the comeback to cut it to 50-45 with 70 seconds left. Freya Newton’s layup and Aphiphany Woods, who scored a team-high 11 points, hit two free throws that drew ISU within one point with 38 seconds left to set up Jones’ heroics.
“(Nordgaard) missed that free throw, (Policicchio) got a really big board and she threw an outlet to me and it kind of just happened,” Jones said. “I dribbled it up and shot the ball. It felt really good. I knew what the time was and that I didn’t have time to pass it up.”
Montana State missed half of its 28 free throw attempts in the second half alone, including five of its final six attempts from the charity stripe. Caudill had a pair with a chance to seal it with 53 seconds left but missed both. Freya Newton missed a 3-pointer with 11 seconds left on the ensuing ISU possession and Nordgaard secured her 11th rebound. Her missed free throw misses came with 6.8 seconds left.
“That’s why we are hurting so much right now,” Binford said. “We are really good down the stretch. We hit free throws. This was uncharacteristic of us. It’s hard to take away those butterflies to step up to the line and hit those because they’ve been doing it all season long.”
Montana State won 14 conference games and 21 games overall to earn the first outright Big Sky championship in program history. In the previous 33 years of women’s basketball in the Big Sky, the winner of the league would host the tournament. Instead, the championship moved to a neutral court in Reno. The Bobcats became the first true upset of the tournament, falling to a team that would not have qualified in the previous eight-team field, capping a three-game losing streak and handing MSU its fourth loss in six games.
“I don’t think there was pressure coming in as the No. 1 seed,” said Hommes after scoring 10 points to finish her career with 1,439, sixth-most in school history. “We deserved that for all the hard work we have done all year. But when it does come down to tight games down the stretch, it comes down to defense and getting stops and converting on the offensive end. We didn’t get that done.”
Idaho State’s ultra-physical defensive style has given Montana State fits for most of the battles between Sobolewski and Binford’s teams. On Wednesday, ISU bullied MSU into hitting just 4-of-24 shots in the second half as Idaho State overcame a 29-18 deficit. ISU shot just 29 percent and hit just 3-of-20 from beyond the arc, but all three triples came in the final three minutes as the Bengals won the second half 33-22. ISU senior center Anna Policicchio shook off a 1-of-9 shooting afternoon to grab a game-high 17 rebounds, including the final rebound to set up the final heave.
“There’s no secret,” Sobolewski said. “We just tried to play hard, stay on the people who can shoot it, sag off the ones who can’t shoot, keep it simple.”
MSU missed its first six shots of the game to fall behind early before ripping off a 16-2 run. By halftime, it looked like the top seed would run past the Bengals. Caudill removed the seal in both halves, hitting a 3-pointer for MSU’s first bucket of the game and converting a layup for MSU’s first conversion of the second half more than six minutes in to the third quarter.
“We took ownership of making plays during that stretch,” Binford said. “We dictated, we attacked, we moved the ball efficiently and we become the aggressor.”
Each time Montana State got good position in the post, if Ferris, Hommes or senior Alexa Dawkins found space, ISU would lower the hammer. MSU’s posts combined to miss seven free throws, including five from Ferris, a junior finished with 16 points and nine rebounds. Nordgaard missed three of her four from the stripe and Dawkins, a 93 percent free throw shooter, also missed a pair.
“We’ve been through that our whole entire careers,” Hommes said. “Everyone knows when you get fouled, you are going to get fouled hard in this league. In that instant in a big game like this, it is key to step to the line and knock them down. We couldn’t convert that today.”
“Bleeding multiple times,” Binford said of the physicality. “I thought they handled it extremely well. We knew it was going to be a physical battle. We knew they were going to bang our posts. One free throw down the stretch and that game is over.”
The win moves Idaho State into the Big Sky Tournament semifinals. The Bengals will play the winner of Montana and North Dakota on Friday. Despite the loss, Montana State earns the Big Sky’s automatic bid into the Women’s National Invitational Tournament.
“This will still be in the back of our minds forever but all these girls on our team stick together so strong,” Hommes said. “We have amazing team chemistry. I want these girls on my side and I think we will be able to bounce back.”
[/restrict]Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
